ED. NOTE: This article is made up of two that were submited on the same subject. Any confusion is entirely the editor's. A slightly different version of Tom McMillens material appeared in Spearpoint, Vol. III, No. 5.

The following article attempts to study in some depth, in terms of the wargame table, the armies that fought in the Trojan War. We have to begin, of course, with the assumption that the event actually occurred. Our assumption is that approximately 1200 BC a powerful confederation of 'Mycenaean' princes invaded Northwest Anatolia, and a prolonged engagement ensued which eventually involved an alliance of many Anatolian and 'Thracian' peoples on the defender's side. There is considerable historical evidence that such an event occurred.

Two considerations have received particular significance: Firstly, that we are looking at the armies relative to each other, rather than in themselves. It seems clear that we are looking at an early example of the clas sic European vs. Asiatic warfare later seen at Marathon, Plataea, Arbela, etc., etc., The European army is largely dependent on fierce, warlike heavy shock infantry. The asiatics have a similar, if less martial, infantry core, but consist mostly of a polyglot mob, superior in mobility and missile capability but inferior in melee. Armies based on our lists should reflect this relationship.

Secondly, as much as possible, we wish our lists to be in accordance with the account of The Iliad. Yes, we know that The Iliad was composed about 500 years after the event and has some anachronistic references to a later age. However, much of Homer has held up very well in the light of discoveries from the Linear B tablets and archaeology of armour and such, and as our knowledge of the period increased, The Iliad seems to be vindicated more than it is discredited.

One of the odder pedantic niceties of scholarship is that obscure, esoteric sources are generally treated as Gospel, while those generally available for scrutiny are treated much more dubiously. The idea seems to be that if information is readily available to the unwashed masses, then it must not be very important. While WRG terminology, the lingua franca of Ancients wargaming, is used in these articles, there is no reason why the lists cannot be used with other systems.

The most exciting, recent research into bronze age Aegean history is the ongoing work of Martin Bernal, whose Black Athena series, with two completed volumes out of a projected four, posits a profound Semitic influence on classical Greek culture, Semitic being defined in a very technical sense as the non-Indo-European lingual and cultural supergroup of northeast Africa and the Levant. For the purpose of designing an Achaean list, Bernal's work is interesting because he traces the origins of the Homeric terms Achaean and Danaan, and develops a direct link between them and the Sea Peoples. As may be attested by the scope of Bernal's work, the story is not a simple one, but may be summarized by touching on several points of interest.

Terms

First, consider the terms Pelasgian and Danaan. The Pelasgians were an Indo-European people who populated Greece, the northern Aegean and parts of Anatolia. In the 19th century BC, accessible sites in Pelasgian Greece were colonized by the Hyksos as the Danaas, followers of the legendary Danaos. The cross-cultural assimilation of the native Pelasgians and their new Danaan/Hyksos masters resulted in the creation of Greek culture. It is certain that the emerging Greek culture maintained close, frequent and fertile contact with Egypt throughout the first millennium B.C.; the influence of Egyptian culture on Greek development was rich and deeply rooted. By the time of our list, Pelasgian and Danaan may be taken to be synonyms for Greek, for they were understood as such by the contemporary non-Greek peoples of the eastern Mediterranean.

Second, consider the term Achaean. By the mid-15th century BC, a "great circle" of commerce flowed from the Aegean to its primary factor, the Phoenician Levant, to Egypt and back to Crete and the Aegean; Bernal labels this the Pax Aegyptiaca (Egyptian Peace). Under the aegis of Egyptian power, the western coast of Anatolia -- Kos, Lydia, Miletos (Milliwanda) and Rhodes -- was colonized by Danaan Greeks. There emerged an alliance, known as Assuwa (=Asia), of these Greek colonies and (probably) many of their non-Greek neighbors. Assuwa was ultimately defeated in a success ful campaign waged by the Hittites, but there survived out its ruins an independent, rump coalition of Greek cities known as Ahhiyawa. The Ahhiyawans - Achaeans -- enter the stage of main land Greek history at this point.

The Greek culture of the Achaeans had been significantly modified by their contact with the east; especially affected were their political and military institutions, the former by the adoption of the palatial, bureaucratic forms of the east, and the latter by an increasingly affluent warrior caste. Tradition had it that

the Achaeans secured dominion over much of homeland Greece south of Boiotia through the agency of kinship, whereby the scions of collateral Asian houses ascended to kingships held by mainland Green kin.

Example of Tradition

The legendary Pelops, founder of the House of Atreus in Mycenae, is the foremost example in this tradition. Regardless of the means used, either peaceful or not, the Achaeans secured a toehold in Greece, probably in the Peloponnese, and gradually expanded their holdings. "Greater Ahhiyawa", the area of Achaean dominance, extended from much of western Anatolia to Crete to south Greece; it would survive (in part) into classical time as Ionia. Third, consider the terms Ionian and Dorian. The Achaean Greeks -- the "Ionians" -- politically and militarily dominated late Mycenaean Greece from the 14th century. There is some sense in this that the older, displaced Danaan aristocracy were a source of discontent.

Once again, tradition has something to say about that, maintaining that the Dorians, i.e. the so-called Heracliadae, or sons of Heracles, were expatriate Danaans who reclaimed their heritage by "returning" from exile in northwest ern Greece and sacking the Achaean cities, thus ending the Muce naean age. With the singular exception of the Athenians, the Ionians were pushed back out into the Aegean and Asia by the Dorian surge. There is considerable support for an alternative theory that the fall of the achaean princes may actually have been precipitated by a "revolt from below" by indigenous Danaans, who may have been aided by their Dorian kin.

All this aside, however, Homer apparently uses the terms Achaean and Danaan interchangeably, most likely because the distinctions drawn here were less meaningful to an Ionian poet working in the 8th century. As suggested above, Danaan was synonymous with Greek. Achaean, however, is a so-called "marked" term, pointing to a specific group of Greeks, viz. the ruling class of south- central and southern Greece.

Finally, consider the term "Sea Peoples". A philosophical link for the terms Pelasgian, Danaan and Achaean to the Sea Peoples is founded on their identification with, respectively, Peleset, Denyen and Eckwesh. Here Bernal is the most recent advocate of a tradition reaching back to the discovery of the Egyptian epi graphs upon which it is based. "Sea Peoples" refers to a specific invasion(s) of Egypt; in addition, it refers more broadly to all such instances of predation, migration and invasion, by anomalous coalitions of divers Anatolian and Aegean refugees, in the eastern Mediterranean in the 13th-12th centuries.

More Sea Peoples

A less controversial voice who nonetheless motivated much of what Bernal has said is N.K. Sandars, an expert on the Sea Peoples. The story of the Sea Peoples is intimately related to the general collapse of the late bronze age palace cultures of Mycenae and the Hittites, and the near failure of Egypt, in the 12th century. The injection of central European bronze, if not bronze-clad warriors, into the metal poor Aegean basin changed the nature of warfare there, precipitating a veritable revolution in military technique that intensified the crises leading to the collapse.

Sandars develops a model of the "typical" Aegean-Levantine warri or of the period, based on representative artwork from archaeo logical finds, whose essential features may be reproduced to a long slashing sword, which was the terror weapon of the age, and a (usually) tasseled kilt. "Accessories" included any of the following: a horned, feathered or fabric crowned helmet or cap; a spear or javelin; a (usually round) shield; a fabric, leather or metal cuirass; and fabric, leather or metal protection for the arms and/or legs. Such a warrior in full kit was an impressive sight, approaching the WRG standard for EHI, especially in the example of the famed Dendra panoply; he certainly would be chauf feured around the battlefield, like some Homeric hero, in his 2 of (preferably) 4 horse chariot. Please refer to warriors 197, the "Dendra panoply" (p. 193); 203, from the "Warrior Vase" (p. 197); and 108-110, from Egyptian Sea Peoples epigraphs (p. 149) in Stillman and Tallis for illustrations. The linear B tablets at Pylos clearly demonstrate that the Dendra type panoply was still current at the end of the Nycenaean age.

End of an Age

Regardless of the origins of the violence that ended the Mycenaean age, the Greeks themselves, and the Achaeans in particular, were very active participants in that violence by the end of the era. One only need recall (see above) the ultimate displacement of the Achaeans from Greece to understand this; Achaean refugees presumably fought for whatever succor they could get, wherever they could find it.

The identification of Pelasgians, Danaans and Achaeans with the Sea Peoples is of interest with regard to an Achaean list since it, among other things, bears directly on the physical appearance of the figures in the army. Horned and "feathered" helmeted Sea Peoples (or Shardana or Philistine) figures would be suitable for Achaean warriors. Danaans could be represented by earlier Mycenaean warriors (tower or figure-of- eight shields, LTS, boar's tusk helmets and no body armour) or even cognate Indo-Europeans such as Indians.

These points provide the theme for an Achaean list. Namely, that Sandars' Aegean military revolution of the 14th-13th centuries was brought to Greece and there nurtured by the Achaeans, This jibes well with the longstanding conventional view that Mycenaean warfare changed after ca. 1400. The "new" element is the Asian origin of that change.

The Achaean military system was primarily an Asian system, emphasizing skirmishing tactics and shock action by elite units of infantry and chariotry. It is no mystery why swift footed Achilles, the great hero of the Achaean Iliad, is first and foremost a matchless runner; he fights by first casting his spear, and then running down and killing with his great sword (megas xiphos) his disabled (or distracted) opponent(s), who cannot escape short of divine intervention. Achilles' shock troops, the myrmidones, whom Homer likens to a pack of blood belching wolves, are well armed but fast moving warriors, seemingly well adapted to either fighting fast-paced, running battles, or standing to and fighting toe-to-toe.

The Achaeans may also be likened to Tom McMillen's favorite Trojan allies, the fierce, Viking-like raptors of the southern Anatolian coast, the Lycians, presumably the Achaean's nearest Asian competitors and most hated natural rivals (though curiously enough, fellow trav elers and helpmates in the Sea Peoples' assault on Egypt).

As there is no question that it was very expensive to buy the arms and armour of the elite troops, even with the increased availability of central European bronzes, the overall proportion of such troops was necessarily small for any given Achaean commu nity. The allied army that campaigned against Troy, however, would have had a much higher proportion of heavily armed, elite units of warriors, since it was a "Panhellenic" concentration of the flower of Achaean manhood at the high tide of the Mycenaean age. The list below reflects this fundamental assumption.

Danaan/Dorian Military System

The Danaan/Dorian military system, which survived into classical times, featured those elements of classical hoplite warfare, i.e., close order infantry, long thrusting spears, and relatively large shields that were depicted quite clearly in pre-Achaean Mycenaean art. The military advantage of the Achaeans over the Danaans may be found in the "revolutionary" quantity and quality of their metal arms and armor, and in their predeliction for and skill in individual combat, which could only be thwarted by the most disciplined of close order infantry.

As an historical footnote, it may be pointed out that the eventual rise of the Dorian hoplite was most likely the result of a synthesis of these sys tems: Achaean arms technology (slashing swords and metal armour) and Danaan tactics (close order infantry, long thrusting spears and large shields). It remains to be pointed out, however, that Homer's Achaean warriors could and did fight under discipline, presumably in closely ordered ranks, most notably for Nestor of Pylos.

The Achaeans had a run of approximately 300 years in Greece (ca. 1450 - ca. 1150), the last fifty years of which were extremely violent and revolutionary as predation apparently replaced trade as the basis of the Mycenaean palace economies. Despite the tradition of a peaceful rise to power in Greece, the Achaeans are

known to have conquered Danaan Crete, as may be attested by the destruction of Knossos, and to have sacked Danaan Thebes in Boiotia, the latter taking place within the same generation as the siege of Troy. The Trojan war, located in time within twenty years of 1200, was a harbinger of the end of the Achaean age.

The Homeric epics, and Hittite and Egyptian epigraphy provide a picture of the times, attesting to the scale, variety and power of the armed forces raised by the shifting coalitions of Aegean, Anatolian and Levantine peoples. The Mycenaean catalog of ships in Book II of the Iliad is believed by some scholars to be an actual survival of an Achaean order of march for an expedition to (most likely) Troy. Put simply, the catalog lists contingents of ships and men, mustered for war, presented in a manner fully consistent with what is now known about the map of Mycenaean Greece. The Homeric catalog (roughly) divides the Achaean army into three main contingents, which may be arbitrarily called the "northern" or Phthian, the Mycenaean, and the Aegean divisions.

The northern division is composed primarily of an Achaean outpost (Phthia and Pelasgian Argos) and independent, though perhaps allied, Danaan kingdoms north of Boiotia. Danaan Thebes had been devastated just prior to the Trojan expedition, thus its absence from the catalog.

The northern group would have had the most direct experience of pressure from aggressive, nonaligned Danaan (Dorian) tribes, as well as aggressive and well-armed, migrating or raiding central European peoples. Indeed, the northern division may embody substantial elements of that pressure in the guise of allied or hired troops, thus the nominal unit of Thra cian mercenaries included below.

Comprising the core group of the coalition -- the Mycenaean contingent -- were the Achaean powers of south Greece, including Mycenae; its client kingdom, Argos; Pylos, a powerful, steadfast and independent ally on the southwest coast; Sparta to the south, allied perhaps through kinship; and finally, the lesser states, including the small isle of Ithaca, strategically located on the western flank.

The Aegean contributors, including Crete, Miletos, and Rhodes, are the focus of many of the most archaic features of the Iliad. Cretan power was past its prime by this time, having been broken by force by Achaean conquerors in the previous century. Tlepole mos of Rhodes, Great Aias and his brother Teukros from Salamis, and Idomeneus of Crete, use body shields and long thrusting spears, pavises and archery, and boars tusk helmets, rather than the metal armour and javelins of Achaean military culture. One may speculate that the wealth of Greater Ahhiyawa flowed in the direction of mainland Achaean Greece.

More Armies of the Trojan War

Historical Background
WRG Specifics
WRG List 10A: Trojans
WRG List 10B: Achaeans